Guns N’ Roses: The Collection [Unauthorised]

I kind of have a love-hate relationship with unathorised DVDs. I know they are normally extremely crappy, but one of my favourite music documentaries, Metal Machine Music: NIN and the Industrial Uprising, is unathorised and is awesome. Ever since I saw it I’ve been hanging out for something just as good.

Guns N’ Roses The Collection [Unauthorised] is a three disc set with an approximate runtime of 2 hours and 51 minutes. Consisting of two documentaries and a disc of rare performances it’s really aimed at GnR completists.

Disc One: Live Rarities

Not much to explain here. This is a disc of rare performances including: Welcome to the Jungle, Patience, Free Fallin’ (with Tom Petty), Civil War, Down on the Farm, Live and Let Die and Yesterdays.

The footage is pretty washed out and bad, but for super fans it’s worth it as there’s a lot of early performances here with Izzy and Steven.

Disc Two: The World’s Greatest Albums: Appetite for Destruction

Runs for approximately an hour and is a pretty poorly put together documentary of clips of the bands and journalists harping on about how great and how cool they were as rockstars. It’s quite Axl-centric, but that is to be expected.

There’s some cool footage here and there but it’s a very surface look at the band.

Disc Three. Rock Case Studies

Another talking head documentary with photos and performances spliced in. Many of the same journalists as the previous documentary appear.

We all know the lore, the history, the notorious goings on, so that aside the only real draw to this collection is that there’s some rare photos and footage. Considering that Rock Case Studies alone is $30 US on Amazon, for completists this is a cheap set if you insist on owning everything GnR related. Don’t get sucked in by the back of the case which states “new and classic interviews” as you’ll be sorely disappointed, there’s more critic opinions and interviews here than anyone who was remotely close to the band.